Despite the fact that they live in the heart of Hollywood, Shotgun Messiah are far from being mere empty-headed Sunset Strip Glam boys. "We think we have the killer band with the killer album and we just want people to know about it," says new vocalist and ex-bassist Tim Skold simply about his slimmed-down band. That killer album is 'Second Coming' (their second, natch!) and an awed (but not slimmed down) Steffan Chirazi is more than excited at the prospect of mega-stardom for these full-of-attitude Swedes...

Tim and Harry may not be the most glamorous names in the world, but it doesn't matter. All that matters is when the hell Uncle Sam Land's gonna wake up and smell this brew.
Shotgun Messiah don't need a hook or a trick to make a good album. They didn't even need a few million dollars.

"I dare anyone to make an album like we just have for 10,000 dollars," says Harry Cody quietly, honestly, whilst Tim Skold cuts in, "That's everything. That was our living expenses, our life pretty much for this next year. It all went into the album, every last cent. Stixx and Bobby Lycon (the new bassist) are homeless right now, just crashing on couches wherever they can."
"But it's okay," reasons Cody, "because we have an album that we'll be alble to listen to and be proud of in 10 years time."

'Second Coming' is not offering a new genre, some brave new dawn of music. What it's offering is a hipswerving mover of an album that combines all the classic elements of great hard rock with melodies that picket your memory. It's a brash, proud and indignant album, stuffed with bravado and swagger-a-plenty. Things have changed for Shotgun Messiah since their last album, basically a collection of re-worked demos from their Kingpin days. The band fired their fancy-panted, over-pomped and overweight pretty-boy frontman Zinny, then came the search for a singer/frontman. They had one all along, but it took a while to notice.

Tim Skold is a star. It doesn't matter if he never sales a million albums or headlines Wembley Arena bacause he's a star. He just got it, an air, an attitude - Skold's stuffed with the bastard. He was a quite superb abssist, moving like a spinning top all over the joint, and time will tell how he will take to this frontman stuff, but his recorded vocals show great promise, a low melodic gravelly touch with more than a hint of punkdom and less of the frilly-knickered whine that haunts so many vocalists.
For his own merits, Harry Cody is a mean guitar player who doesn't talk a fat lot about it or challenge the world to recognize his abilities. Indeed, Shotgun Messiah aren't about talking fat globs of hype-bullshit. We discuss the reasons behind printing a line from each song below the title on the cover artwork, a smart idea which adds an extra dimension to everything.

Tim: "The sub-titles are there so people so people will bother to look below the surface and see more there."

Harry enlarges the theme.

"'Sexdrugsrockn'roll' sounds like a clichéd anthem, 'Red Hot' is a stomper which suggests 'boy-meets-girl', yet there's a lot more behind them..."

'Red Hot' is a stomper which suggetsts a certain pleasure in violence.

Tim: "The song is about an inevitability in my life, a natural trait - I think they call it a disorder! I don't know any more about it because I've never had enough money to see a doctor about it!"

What makes him make like Dirty Harry and Mike Tyson?

"Just people. We need people to piss us off, aggravate us constantly, because that doubles our motivation. We're good at fighting uphill battles..."

Force of habit, no doubt...

Harry: "It could be that, but I'd hate to have everybody agree with us. I wouldn't know what to do, I wouldn't understand what was going on."

Surely you're aware how many of those titles relate directly to Los Angeles and what for many people is a reality? Chicks, drugs, bikes, love trials, yawndom...

Harry: "I'm not really interested in being accepted in LA because there's so much more to the world than Hollywood. People are very shallow there."

Tim: "We were never part of that whole thing. People tried to do it to us, label us as this Sunset Strip band - Glam Gods. We didn't even know we were Glam, just bacuse we had hair, y'know... I always thought we were more sci-fi or something."

"People like to label you just because they can. And it is possible to be in LA without being part of the Hollywood scene, so that's pretty much what we do, just our own thing, get on with our lives and our music."

Harry sighs before launching a quiet tirade. "I'm set on proving people wrong. It pisses me off to think about how people pre-concieve. I honestly thought that people would realize you could have big hair and play guitar really well, and they didn't! People saw the album of you with a big hair and tossed the album aside without even listening to it! That's just bullshit, that really is."

We move onto the history of Zinny's sacking.

Tim: "He was a Glam guy for sure. He came from a band called Easy Action. We went through an identity crisis of our own and it was easy to latch onto him, because he was the only thing in Sweden near what we wanted..."

Harry: "...who didn't look like Robert Plant, who didn't sound like David Coverdale. It was a choice then - either Deep Purple or Hanoi Rocks. We tried to make him more into our thing, more futuristic thinking, more Sputnik (a reference to to Sigue Sigue Sputnik, for whom the Shotgun have a morbid fascination), but he is the way he is. He'll be that way for the next 10 years.

"It came down to personal level more than anything. We weren't getting along, and when we did fire him there was this intense feeling of relief. But at the same time our backs were against the wall."

Tim: "Your normal business-oriented band would've had the replacement cut out before they made the move, but we can't do that shit."

Harry: "Honesty is a very strong part of my personality, so if we decide that someone's not gonna be in the band we tell them right then instead of sitting on it until the right replacement comes up. And our record company supported us too, and people were coming out of the woodwork saying, 'I couldn't get into the band because of the singer, but I loved the band'..."

Tim: "Which in itself is so 'Hollywood'; you always get that double-edged thing. As soon as we were signed Relativity a whole bunch of labels came up and said, 'We could've given you a better deal', so where were they? We've sold 130-140,000 albums and people come up to us and say, 'If you were with me it would've been Gold...'. Fuck you, asshole."

Ultimately, Shotgun Messiah are uncompromising Swedes trapped in Hollywood. They don't like it, so why are they based there?

Harry: "We like the climate!"

It's that simple?

"That simple. I just like the weather. I don't go to the clubs, I don't hang out in Hollywood. It's also obviously the best place for us to be to deal with our direct business, but I don't do the schmoozing stuff."

Tim: "There's still some pretty cool people there too - we're not the only ones who are different. It boils down to just being very careful how you choose your company and your conversation."

The album title 'Second Coming' might seem arrogant to many people.

"There is an element of frustration at being missed the last time around," agrees harry, "but also an element of humour about the whole title and its connotations. More than enything else, it is our second coming. We have a new singer, it's been three years since we did that last album, these are new songs. Plus, you can't call a third album 'Second Copming'!"

Tim: "It's remarkable how many people think we're trying to make out we're God or something. We seem to offend people quite easily."

Does it really feel like you've got a new singer in Tim? After all, you've known each other a long time.

"Nothing's changed, our way of writing hasn't changed; we're still the main contributors as it's always been. When Tim wanted to give it a try singing, we were at the demo stage when anything's okay for a tryout. We had invited a guy to come down and sing on the demo but he hadn't shown up, which is when Tim said he wanted to give it a try."

"I always loved real singers like Rob Halford," says Tim, "but I didn't wanna go to vocals lessons or else I'd just end up coming out like another of our Hollywood friends..."

"The thing with us," sighs Harry, "is that we really aren't interrested in lush carpets of perfect sound. At the demo stage our songs had more keyboards on, and we ended up reducing and reducing them as the songs got more and more complete, so that whole sound is not what we're about. We're talking about hard-driving shit."

Tim: "Which is how the song 'Trouble' came about (a great, stomping monster). We we're at Grover-Jackson's studio; he'd just opened up this all-digital place and we were happy to try it out, and that's when I really wanted to try singing to this hard-assed song."

"I'm really into that whole Judas Priest thing," admits Harry. "I always think of London with that song for some reason. In it, I mixed that whole cyber-punk thing with the kids who are always playing video games in the arcades."

"I was thinking about how it would be like being in that generation now, if we were doing these designer drugs and playing video games, being onky semi-in touch with reality. That's probably the most pro-drug, pro-violence, pro-bad stuff song on the album."

Funny, coming from a band of non-drug takers who confess of being too scared to try any of the evil powders which circulate the entertainment world. But what got Cody son interested in this whole sci-fi thing?

"I read a lot of graphic novels. 'Martial Law' is heavy, some Alan Moore stuff is really cool. I'm into the fantasy element, futuristic..."

So you wouldn't be reading about serial killers or true crime?

"I'm happier with fiction. Although being a guitar-playing bum gives you a lotta time to stay in and read!"

Tim: "I tend to get out to parties and get stupid!"

Harry: "So we sort of complement each other. He brings in the whole reality element... I must confess, though, if I had a zillion bucks I'd probably have the huge screen TV and watch movies all the time, play video games, play guitar in my own space. I'd probably become a sick reclusive type!"

"I think we've lost sight of that holy goal og being rocks stars," says Tim in parting.

"That's not what drives us any more. It is that quite simply we think we have the killer band with the killer album and we just want people to know about it."

And y'know what? That isn't conceit, it's honesty.